The Top Vehicle for Vacationers Driving to Disney Parks in 2011
As millions of people across the US and Canada begin planning their annual trek south for the winter many will have a Disney theme park as their final destination. You can literally draw a line down the middle of North America to predict which parks these travelers will visit with the western half visiting Disneyland and Disney California Adventure Park in southern California and the eastern half visiting Disney World in Orlando, Florida.
North America divided by two realms of Disney
What’s harder to predict are the types of vehicles these travelers will be driving on their epic road trips to Disney, and so we thought this would be an interesting study to undertake given that Disney World is the most popular attraction entered on our flagship Website Cost2Drive.com, a site used by over 300,000 people in 2011 to help plan car trips. Nearly 10,000 of these road trippers entered a Disney theme park as their destination providing us with an ample supply of routes from which to analyze. Below are our findings.
The Top 10 Vehicles Driven to Disney Parks
We don’t know if anyone has ever conducted a study like this, but since users of Cost2Drive enter their vehicle information on the site we’re able to identify the most popular cars that people are driving to Disney World and Disneyland. Not surprisingly, the top four vehicles are minivans which are ideally suited for the traveling family.
Based on 10,000 routes to Disney parks entered on Cost2Drive.com
What is surprising, however, is how different this list is from the top vehicles entered on Cost2Drive overall in 2011. Well be sharing that list in a future post, but don’t expect minivans to populate the top positions. It is interesting to note that SUV’s didn’t crack the top five, though a number did make it into the top 20 rankings. The Dodge Caravan took the top slot, capturing 10.5% of all the trips to Disney World and Disneyland on Cost2Drive, followed closely by the Honda Odyssey. Rankings of the all of the top 10 are as follows:
- Dodge Caravan (10.5%)
- Honda Odyssey (9.6%)
- Chrysler Town & Country (6.3%)
- Toyota Sienna (6.0%)
- Toyota Camry (5.1%)
- Ford Explorer (5.0%)
- Honda Civic (4.9%)
- Honda Pilot (4.3%)
- Honda Accord (4.2%)
- Ford Expedition (4.2%)
Average Trip Distance by Vehicle
People are always amazed when we tell them that average distance of routes entered on Cost2Drive is over 800 miles each way, and that expands further for trips to the Disney theme parks where the average trip distance is over 1,000 miles. The average trip length varies significantly by vehicle type with minivans and SUVs outpacing sedans in terms of trip length.
Average distance driven to Disney theme parks (one-way)
In this case its the Chrysler Town & Country that takes the crown with an average trip length of 1165 miles each way. The overall average trip length was 1,065 miles with the top 10 rankings as follows:
- Chrysler Town & Country – 1,165 miles
- Dodge Caravan – 1,149 miles
- Toyota Sienna – 1,118 miles
- Honda Odyssey – 1,104 miles
- Ford Expedition – 1,027 miles
- Honda Civic – 1,008 miles
- Honda Pilot – 985 miles
- Ford Explorer – 969 miles
- Toyota Camry – 964 miles
- Honda Accord – 841 miles
Cost of Driving
Because gas prices are at record highs for this time of year one of the most important considerations for consumers is how much they will need to budget for gas to get to the Disney parks. We entered a typical trip from Chicago to Disney World into our trip cost calculator on Cost2Drive.com to compare the cost of driving the 2011 models of the four leading minivans (note that the Dodge Caravan is now the Grand Caravan):
Driving costs based on 2011 model year vehicles using EPA MPG estimates
In this scenario its the 2011 Honda Odyssey that ends up with the crown being the most fuel efficient of the four minivans, costing only $144 each way to drive from Chicago to Orlando.
If you’re planning a winter road trip check out the Cost2Drive trip calculator to help you plan the trip. It will quickly calculate fuel costs based on real time gas prices along your route and help you save money by locating the cheapest gas at refueling points along the way. It also displays the cheapest airfare so you can see if its cheaper to fly or drive to your destination.
If you have an iPhone you can download our new Cost2Drive iPhone app that gives you all the great features of the Website plus it lets you save and compare up to five vehicles in the app. Download it today and never again wonder what it will cost to drive places.
Happy New Year and Happy & Safe Driving in 2012!
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